FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 7, 2019

Cinema Guild acquires Prix Marcel Duchamp winner Éric Baudelaire's festival favorite Un Film Dramatique

NEW YORK, NY-Cinema Guild announced today the acquisition of all U.S. distribution rights for Éric Baudelaire’s Un Film Dramatique. The film had its international premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in August before playing the Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival this fall. In October, Baudelaire was announced as the winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France’s biggest art prize. Cinema Guild will open the film in U.S. theaters in 2020.

Commissioned as a dedicated artwork for the newly constructed Dora Maar middle school on the outskirts of Paris, Un Film Dramatique is a lively portrait of the first class to attend the school, filmed over the course of four years. The group of 21 middle schoolers discuss the drama of their daily lives and experiment with cameras and equipment. They are the film’s subjects, and also its makers.

With a refreshingly uninhibited approach, Baudelaire (Letters to Max, The Anabasis of May...) offers a new perspective on the realities of our current socio-political moment that is both playful and purposeful. As the students debate the approaching elections and the immigration crisis, they also seek to answer a key political question—what are we doing here together?

"In Un Film Dramatique, Éric and the students beautifully capture the joy of filmmaking," said Cinema Guild President Peter Kelly. "Audiences young and old will find themselves falling in love with these kids and with cinema itself."

"We worked with the students in a very open-ended manner, with two guiding principles," said Baudelaire. "The first was that I wasn’t there to teach them anything. The second was that we would make a film that starts as a film about them, slowly becoming a film made with them, and eventually, after four years, it would end up as a film by them."

He adds, "It means a lot to me, and to the students, that this film will reach an American audience."

The deal was negotiated by Peter Kelly of Cinema Guild with Éric Baudelaire and Poulet-Malassis.

Cinema Guild is a premier distributor of world cinema, independent films and documentaries, whose upcoming releases include Angela Schanelec's I Was at Home, But..., Wang Xiaoshuai’s Chinese Portrait and Albert Serra’s Liberté. Recent theatrical releases include Lucio Castro’s End of the Century, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s The Wild Pear Tree and RaMell Ross’s Academy Award-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening.

For press inquiries, please contact us at:

(212) 685-6242 or press at cinemaguild dot com

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